


All Around Me

by atthestars



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Episode Related, Family, Ficlet, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-11
Updated: 2012-11-11
Packaged: 2017-11-18 10:41:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/560132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atthestars/pseuds/atthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even when she can’t see him, she can still feel him around. She’s not crazy. (Pre-1.04 Claudia)</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Around Me

Everyday she’s closer and closer to locking down a location on the enigmatic Professor Nielsen. Everyday she’s closer and closer to successfully recreating Joshua’s experiment. She barely goes by her apartment anymore; Joshua’s presence is strongest in his old lab. She doesn’t sleep much because she’s afraid that she’s going to miss him and he won’t come back. But he always comes back and for that she is always grateful because she’s almost positive that she’s not crazy and that Josh isn’t just some figment of her imagination or a ghost haunting her. Joshua is alive and trapped somewhere.

She doesn’t dwell on the fact that he looks exactly the same as he did twelve years ago when he vanished before her eyes. He hasn’t aged a day. She can’t explain it. She wonders what he sees when he looks at her. Does he still see her ten years old? Has he been watching her grow up? Does he recognize her now? Will he know who she is? Will he know who he is?

At night, she lounges on an air mattress in a corner of the lab, reading over Joshua’s notes. It’s habit, ritual. She starts to feel light-headed, a breeze starts to build, and she knows that Josh is on his way. The wind picks up, as does the energy in the room, electricity crackling.

She sits up as a blur zooms around the room, slowing materializing in front of her and it’s Joshua. He’s reaching for her, as always, trying to say something but she can never understand. He sounds so far away. Her fingers grasp at the air where she sees his outreached hand grabbing for her. More than anything she wants to feel her hand close around his and pull him to her, bring him home. But she can’t and then he’s gone and it’s almost like he was never even there.

She collapses against the mattress, drained. She feels something wet at the base of her nostril and wipes at her nose with the side of her hand. She’s not all that surprised to see blood—a sign of life. Joshua was there. Joshua _is_ there. Her eyelids slowly close and open several times. She’s ready to give in to sleep when an alarm sounds on her laptop, setting off a burst of excited energy inside of her. She jumps up and scrambles across the room. Her eyes move across the screen, a pleased smirk forming on her lips.

“Looks like I found Waldo.”


End file.
